Wes Anderson

The influential director and his longtime music supervisor Randall Poster talk about the sound and vision of their latest collaboration, Moonrise Kingdom.

Pitchfork: You weren't hugely familiar with classical music before working on Moonrise Kingdom, so when Wes came to you wanting to use a lot of classical pieces, what did you think?

Randall Poster: Before there was any script or storyline for this film, Wes said, "I really want to do something with Britten's Noye's Fludde." I've worked with Wes on all his movies, and there's usually a song or musical moment that becomes this seed from which the whole story grows. The way we work is that when Wes has inspiration, I basically go and try to get our arms around the entirety of it. So at that moment, I started collecting all of Benjamin Britten's recordings and familiarizing myself with his history and music. It's like being in school. It's on me to become as much of an expert as I can be, and that's what's exciting about it-- it's not just about honing in on what's happening in the world of music today. It opens you up to things that you weren't familiar with.

Pitchfork: Your job almost sounds like a journalistic enterprise.

RP: It is like being a journalist, but it's also like being a detective-- sometimes it's also actually finding the music. For The Darjeeling Limited, Wes thought we should use music from other Indian movies, and specifically the films of Satyajit Ray. And that took me to India, to the Satyajit Ray Foundation, where I begged them to transfer the master tapes to CD for us.

Pitchfork: How has the internet affected what you do?

RP: It's been great. When I started out, there was no internet, and if I'd have to go to L.A. for a project, I literally would bring suitcases full of CDs. There were times when I'd have to be there when Tower Records opened in the morning, and hopefully they had that CD I was looking for. So the internet has definitely made certain things easier.

Pitchfork: Do you still keep up with what's going on in music today, or is music more of a project-to-project interest for you?

RP: Thankfully, I still have a physical response to new music, not just an intellectual understanding of it. I feel very lucky that that's the case. It's not like, "I know that Japandroids are cool, but I'm over it." To tell you the truth, if I don't have to catch a sight of myself in the mirror, I'm still that geeky 16-year-old kid responding to music.

But I think people do get detached from it. Because there's such a proliferation of music, when people step out of it a little bit, they feel lost and they give up. They need a little bit of direction or context; lost youth is a very complicated situation to find yourself in.

I'm accustomed to being the oldest person at a gig, but when I went to see Skrillex at Roseland this year, it was dramatic. There were a lot of kids that looked like they were 15 years old. But I loved it. I truly loved it. I think Skrillex is just brilliant. When I walked into that club, I felt like I swallowed the music-- it was like Alien, like it went into me.

I'm working on Harmony Korine's movie Spring Breakers now, and Skrillex is doing original music for us. I had heard of Skrillex, but I wasn't watching it that closely. And Harmony, who I've worked with forever, sent me a link to some Skrillex YouTubes, and I saw one had 54 million hits-- I thought he had somehow figured out a way to manipulate the numbers. And then it dawns on you: There are kids that are never going to buy a record. They're just going to play songs on YouTube.

Pitchfork: That sounds like a real whiplash, from Benjamin Britten to Skrillex.

RP: That's what fun about it. I don't get trapped in anything. I get to refresh. Especially when you get work with people as visionary as Harmony and Wes; when Wes points you in a direction, you know it's going to be like water in a desert, something you want to jump into really deeply.

Pitchfork: Wes' films are sometimes criticized for being too twee and manicured, though the music in these films-- from the British Invasion stuff to the Hank Williams songs in Moonrise-- is often anything but.

RP: Emotionally, the music is not contained or twee. Wes is nobody's pussy. He's a fighter. He just has his vision and his obsessions.

Pitchfork: Do you ever think about whether your work with Wes has inspired people to make music, or opened them up to new sounds?

RP: In the course of the 16 years that we've worked together, a lot of bands have been born, and I think there have been some inspired by Wes, to a certain degree. And when kids come up to you and they're like, "Rushmore really opened me up to a whole world of music," that's the absolute greatest. Both of us have shared the experience of being the kid in the dark, watching the movie and just saying, "Oh my God, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen." And when you feel like you've affected another kid sitting in the dark, that's a great reward.